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SEMO.^ 



ON J LIE DEATH OF HON. WILLIAM PLUME Ji 



PKEACUED AT EITIXG SEPT. il, 1S.34, 



BY ANDREW P. PEABODY, D. 17. 




SERMOX 



PRRAC'UKJ) A'J' KPPTX(i. N. IT. 



SEPTEMBER 21, 1854, 



FUNERAL OF HON. WILLIAM PLUMER 



ANDIiEW P. PEABODY. 



PASTOR OF THE SOUTH CHUROU, POUTiMOUTlI,, N. H. 



-A.r < q««» 



PRINTED BV REQUEST. 




PORTSMOUTH : 

C. \V. BREWSTER & SON, PRINTERS. 

1854. 



1 



SEEMON. 



I SAMUEL, ni : 18. 
"It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him food." 

These words are memorable, not alone for their own pious 
significance, but in connection with him who uttered them. 
'He was an old man, who had grown old in honor and pros- 
perity ; and now he is suddenly overtaken by the prediction 
of a series of calamities, which will not only make him child- 
less, but will bring him down to the grave with heavy and 
lasting reproach upon his name and family. His trial, in an 
earthly point of view, is as severe as it can be ; it has no 
hopeful side, no consoling aspect. Yet there is not so much 
as a momentary visiting of distrust or doubt, but a sponta- 
neous expression of confidence in the Divine wisdom and 
benignity. 

There are two ways in which we may meet trials and 
afflictions. One way is to attempt to reason them out, — to 
account for them, — to determine the ivhy with reference to 
their time, manner and circumstances, — to demonstrate point 
by point their consistency with the divine justice and mercy. 



4 

• 

But tills we can seldom do to our satisfaction, perhaps never 
with absolute truth. God's ways are higher than our ways, 
and God's thoughts than our thoughts. Were we wise 
enough to trace the reasons of his dealings with us, we 
should be wise enough to govern our own affairs without 
his aid. Because of the depth of his wisdom and the shal- 
lowness of ours, there must ever be clouds and darkness 
round about him. Often indeed we may see how calamity 
might have been worse. Often we may trace a certain time- 
liness in the visitation. Almost always we can discern kindly 
preparatives, palliatives and consolations. But even then 
comes the question. Why need this aflfliction have been sent 
in any form ? or, deeper still, Why, under the government of 
a good God, need suffering ever take place ? And there are 
griefs, which at the time seem to subserve no earthly use. 
How often is the very life taken, which to human view most 
needed to be spared, while the cumberers of the ground linger 
on, as if the death-angel had lost their names from his muster- 
roll! Yet more, the best influences of affliction can be de- 
veloped only in the lapse of time, and can hardly be so much 
as anticipated in the fresh flow of sorrow. Job and his com- 
forters attempted, each in his own way and each with man- 
ifold errors and misapprehensions, to reason out the case 
of the afflicted patriarch, and to justify the dealings of a 
mysterious Providence ; but Jehovah, speaking out of the 
whirlwind, disallowed the reasonings of all alike, and pro- 
pounded his own almightiness and mercy as furnishing the 
sole and ample basis for their faith and trust. 



For us Christians there is a still higher ground of distrust 
in reasonings of this class. We think of ourselves and of our 
departed friends as immortal, and regard the entire discipline 
of this life as adjusted with reference to our future and eter- 
nal well-being. But the future life is to a great degree a 
sealed book to us ; and the reasons for many of the divine 
dispensations may all lie beyond the grave. The friend that 
is taken from us may be called away, not because there was 
any earthly good to result from his removal, but to rescue 
him from certain evil which he must have encountered, or to 
transfer him to a more congenial school of education and 
sphere of duty, or to elevate him to some special service in 
the spiritual world, for which his discipline and character have 
peculiarly fitted him. The sorely afflicted among the living 
also may have their affliction sent for reasons which they can 
never recognize on earth, — to ward off temptations or dangers 
which they would have incurred, but in sight of which their 
altered course will never bring them, — or to preserve and per- 
fect traits of character which would have been put in peril by 
continued prosperity, — or to fit them for a higher measure of 
happiness which they cannot anticipate till they awake in 
heaven to its fruition. For these reasons we are inadequate 
to sit in judgment on the course of Providence with us. 

The other mode of meeting our afflictions is that suggested 
in our text, — " It is the Lord ; let him do what seemeth him 
good." We look away, we look up from our grief to him 
who has ordained it. We seek the reasons for it, not in our 
condition, but in his character. We presume not to open the 



6 

sealed book, but rejoice 1o trace the inscription on the seal, — 
" I will never leave, nor forsake thee." God, the infinite, the 
unchangeable, is the soul's chief need in the hour of grief. 
Our first feeling under severe affliction is that of utter inse- 
curity. The ground seems heaving and quaking beneath us ; 
the lights of heaven swim before our bewildered vision; the 
foundations are all shaken ; every calculation is deranged, 
every prospect clouded, the whole earthly life unsettled. 
Well did the sacred writers draw their imagery for these ap- 
palling vicissitudes from the sea, and represent the grief- 
stricken soul as tempest-tossed, driven by the wind, buffeted 
by the billows. The first craving of the soul is for something 
firm, — immovable, — some ground of sure reliance, — some 
mooring or anchorage where wind and wave may lose their 
power. This we find only iu the Rock of Ages, — the im- 
mutable Jehovah, — only when we can say in undoubting 
faith, " It is the Lord." 

" It is the Lord" omnipotent. The realm of nature lies 
beneath his fiat. No chance or fate has place in his universe. 
No disease plies its dread work by a blind necessity of its 
own. The floods may lift up their voice; but the Lord on 
high is mightier than they. The death-angel may brood with 
sable wing over our dwellings ; but his arrows fall harmless 
except where God bids them strike. In his exhaustless re- 
sources, he can overrule the forces of nature, — can say to fever 
or pestilence, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." No 
power of harming can exceed its appointed limits and uses. 
The events that fill us with dread and agony arc, in the lit- 



eral and strict sense of the words, his doings, and when they 
seem inevitable, it is because he would not have them other- 
wise. 

" It is the Lord" omniscient, — infinite in wisdom. Wanton 
or haphazard administration there cannot be in his universe. 
Purposeless events cannot take place. Disconnected, unac- 
countable, mysterious as the incidents of this mortal life often 
seem, they seem so because they arc parts of a plan which 
comprehends all beings and all eternity. The reasons for 
them all lie open to the Supreme Intelligence. The same 
adaptation of means to ends, which presides in the structure 
alike of the sun and the field-flower, in the order of the firm- 
ament and the globing of the dew-drop, governs the seem- 
ingly troubled current of earthly affairs, — weaves with subtile 
skill the seemingly tangled web of human destiny. Of that 
web we now see only the reverse side, confused in shreds 
and colors, while to the inhabitants of heaven it presents only 
smoothness, symmetry and beauty. 

" It is the Lord" gracious and merciful. We know him 
thus from the benignant order of nature, the aflluent provis- 
ion for happiness, the numberless objects whose only end is 
to be enjoyed. We know him thus from our own experi- 
ence, in which we can count our calamities and number our 
griefs, but must acknowledge mercies more in number than 
the sands of the sea. We know him thus from the benign 
Redeemer, the " God with us," the friend, protector, helper, 
healer, comforter, brother of man, who is presented to us as 
" the brightness of God's glory and the express image of his 



8 

person." God loves us better than we can love ourselves. 
He loves those that have gone from us better than we can love 
them. He can inflict no real evil. He can send no sorrow 
that enfolds not the germs of blessedness. He can call no 
child of his out of the world but in the best time for him who 
goes and for those who stay. He can ordain no tears that 
may not be as the dew-drops of a brighter, happier morning- 
He can send no privation that may not lead to greater ful- 
ness and nobler joy. He can make no home desolate, ex- 
cept the better to fit its tenants for the home on high. He can 
plant thorns on our path through life, only that they may 
hedge in a safer way through temptation and by the pitfalls 
of evil to his heavenly presence. " He knoweth our frame." 
His will is our holiness and happiness. Here then we may 
dismiss our care and drop our burden. Nor need we in the 
hour of gi'ief cast distrustful glances into the future ; for he 
who divided the sea and clave the rock for his covenant peo- 
ple in the days of old, can mark out our secure path through 
the billows of an afflictive Providence, can open for us 
springs of living water on the desert-passages of our pil- 
grimage, can fulfil every promise, and crown every hope, 
and lead us on through trial to attainment, through conflict 
to victory, through the gates of death to life incorruptible and 
eternal. 

*' It is the Lord." Oar only comfort is in looking above 
all second causes to Him, the Arbiter of all events, the Fath- 
er of all spirits. Did the voice come to us individually, so 
that we knew it to be his, " I am thy Father, — I will guide 



ihee by my counsel and afterward receive thee to glory," — 
we should feel and fear no evil ; but our hearts would be 
filled with gladness while we were passing through the dark- 
est forms of trial and calamity. This has been uttered for 
us, — uttered from the parted heavens, though not within the 
hearing of the outward ear. It is said to us not only in rev- 
elation, but in the very idea of God, which clasps the zone of 
infinite love around the universe. 

" It is the Lord ; let him do what seemeth him good." 
For what know we of good? Even as the child spurns the 
healing draught, and cries for the glittering, but murderous 
blade, so might we choose the seeming good that would be 
our bane and curse, and reject the seeming evil that is fraught 
with unspeakable blessedness. We know less of our needs 
and fitnesses for the mansion prepared for us in the house on 
high, than does the child of the needs and fitnesses of the 
earthly career just opening all unseen before him. Our true 
place is as children before God, owning our ignorance and 
his benignant wisdom in our behalf, and committing our 
way to him who doeth all things well. Let affliction lift our 
thoughts to him. Though we may not know all its appoint- 
ed uses, this at least is second to no other, — the recalling to 
him of our divided thoughts, our distracted affections, our 
alienated loyalty, — the drawing forth from our hearts of the 
melodies of trust and praise, — the raising of our souls into a 
serener atmosphere of contemplation, love and duty. 

And now there comes to my ear, through the word of 
prophecy, a voice of sublime consolation for the deeply 



10 

afflicted who turn to God in th^ir sorrow. The seer of Pat- 
mos beholds a glorious company, white-robed, palm-bearing, 
with every token of ecstatic joy. It is asked, " Who are 
these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came 
they ? " And the voice that asks replies, " These are they 
which came out of great tribulation, and have w^ashed their 
robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
Therefore," through the ministry of sorrow, " are they before 
the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his tem- 
ple ; and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among 
them." Who can tell how large a part of their felicity may 
be due to the contrast with earthly trial and grief, — how em- 
phatic a reference there may be to the calamities of their 
mortal estate, when it is added, — " They shall hunger no 
more, neither thirst any more ? " Who can say of how ines- 
timable worth their tears may seem, how unutterably thankful 
they may be for every dark passage of their earthly pilgrim- 
age, when " God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ?" 

Never could there have been more need of thoughts like 
those which I have set before you, than in the event which 
has now called us together. Dark and mysterious indeed is 
this visitation of Providence ; this judgment is past our find- 
ing out. Our friend has been summoned from a life which 
he enjoyed and adorned, — from a home where his presence 
was a perpetual benediction, — from numerous friends whom 
his wisdom has enlightened and his kindness cheered, — from 
a community which has been blessed by his judicious and 
pacific counsels, his example of integrity and purity, his in- 



11 

iluence ilowing through a thousand channels of substantial 
usefulness. His sun has gone down while it was yet day. 
The clouds that threatened to eclipse it had been dispelled, 
a new lease of life and of vigorous health seemed to have 
been bestowed, and now, at an hour when we thought not, 
in the midst of unfinished plans and of hopes that might 
well have reached out to lengthened years, " God changeth 
his countenance, and sendeth him away." 

Our friend's external history has been marked by few strik- 
ing incidents, — by fewer than would have attended it, had 
his ambition for public trusts been commensurate with his 
fitness for them. Early imbued with liberal tastes and studi- 
ous habits by the precept and example of his revered father, 
he passed his university course with honor as an industrious 
and successful scholar, and as a youth of high principle and 
noble promise, and formed with the brightest and best of his 
classmates and coevals friendships which death alone has 
suspended. He entered the legal profession under auspices 
that would have ensured his eminence at the bar, had not his 
career been interrupted at the outset and ultimately cut short 
by public ofRce. For several years he represented his fellow- 
citizens in the Legislature of New-Hampshire. For six 
years he sat in Congress as the Representative of this Dis- 
trict. During that period occurred the first momentous strug- 
gle between freedom and the encroaching power of slavery, 
and by speech and vote he stood firm on the side of liberty, — 
faithful when older statesmen were false to their trust, and 
when motives which would have been irresistible to one- less 



12 

conscientiously upright were heaped into the opposite scale 
For almost thirty years he has led, near his native home, a 
life of dignified retirement and incessant literary industry. 
Yet during these years he has manifested neither the spirit 
nor the habits of a recluse. His kind and helpful relations 
with society have never been suspended. He has been the 
sound adviser, the sympathizing and faithful friend, of a very 
numerous circle both here and elsewhere. While he has not 
sought, he has not shunned such public trusts as he could 
sustain consistently with his plans and habits of intellectual 
labor. He was a prominent and diligent member of the late 
Constitutional Convention, and as President of the Board of 
Trustees of the Insane Asylum he has bestowed the most 
assiduous and humane care upon a class of our fellow-be- 
ings, for whom his services have been those of the purest 
philanthropy, such as have their " witness in heaven and 
record on high." 

His literary culture was of a superior order. Thoroughly 
grounded in that classical learning which is the foundation 
of all other erudition, familiar with the best English authors, 
deeply read in the history of all nations and especially of his 
own, he could hardly touch a subject which he did not illumine 
and adorn. Seldom have I been conversant with a mind so 
rich and full, so accurate in fact, so sound in opinion, so 
weighty in inference, so suggestive and instructive to one of 
kindred tastes and congenial pursuits. While as a writer he 
has not pandered to the morbid craving for excitement and 
extravagance, his productions both in prose and verse have 



13 

been as " apples of gold in pictures of silver," — pure and 
lofty sentiments set in chaste imagery, in an easy, compact, 
vigorous style, sure to meet the highest appreciation with those 
whose praise is of the highest worth. He had in successful 
progressliterary labors which, had his life been longer spared, 
would have associated his name with important, but previ- 
ously unwritten portions of the history of his native state, 
and of the legislation and earlier political crises of the country. 
In private life you know his worth. Simplicity, uprightness, 
hospitality and kindness, while they had given to his youth 
the ripeness of age, embalmed for his age the freshness of 
youth. A heart that could not grow old made us who loved 
him insensible of the lapse of time with him, — unaware that 
he was passing into those latter years, in which the frame 
can make so feeble a stand against disease or infirmity. 
With his powers in full vigor, with no touch of the frosts 
of age upon his affections, we felt that he occupied a place, 
not among the vanguard, but midway, in the great procession 
to the grave. Over the nearer relations of life, we may not 
withdraw the veil. Remembrances which time cannot make 
less vivid, grief which only the healing hand of Divine love 
can render less poignant, will attest how truly he was the 
light and joy of his home, — how desolate that home has be- 
come in consequence of his removal. As a neighbor and a 
citizen, he has constantly studied the things that make for 
peace, and has been the steadfast friend of improvement and 
progress, a helper in every good work, a consistent and judi- 
cious advocate of whatever could render those around him 



14 

happier and better. Many already know that they have lost 
one of their most reliable friends. Many more will learn by 
his loss of what unspeakable worth to the order and well-be- 
ing of society are the presence and influence of such a man 
in the community around him. 

But, when we think of his passage hence, and of the sol- 
emn scenes of eternity on which he has entered, we are most 
of all interested to know how his mind and his heart were 
affected as regards that religion, which alone can render the 
life truly beautiful, and can breathe into the soul of the dying 
the hope of immortality. The public profession of religion 
in the usual form of the communion-service was indeed 
wanting, perhaps in part from an instinctive dread of public- 
ity as to the concerns of the soul with its God, probably still 
more from his remoteness from a body of communicants, to 
whose creed he could assent, or with whom he could sympa- 
thize in their views of Christian doctrine. But from repeat- 
ed and prolonged conversations with him, I know that his 
faith was firmly established in the great truths of revelation, 
as attested ,by prophecy and miracle, and embodied in the 
person, teachings and mediation of the Divine Redeemer. 
He loved the Bible, and had made it the subject of his dili- 
gent and profound study. He found no poetry, no philoso- 
phy, no morality, that could bear comparison with its inspired 
utterances. Many of his choicest poetical productions are 
on themes suggested by holy writ, or versifications of the 
sublime strains of prophet or psalmist. His life, in its close 



15 

adherence to the precepts of his Divine Master, was of itself 
the best profession of allegiance to him, — that without which 
mere outward forms would have been empty and worthless. 
He had clear and happy views of the future life, and though 
the suddenness of his departure left him little scope for that 
so-called preparation for death which is no preparation, death 
was a theme familiar to his thoughts long before its shadow 
gathered over him. We yield his body to its last slumber, in 
the trust that what is our loss is for him unspeakable gain. 

Untimely as his removal seems to us who remain, we can- 
not doubt that he has been taken away in good time. In 
good time, because it was God's time. And from how much 
has he been spared, from which we can see the hand of 
mercy in sparing him ! He has been taken, before the dark- 
est clouds and the fiercest storms of life had gathered about 
him, — before the evil days came and the pleasureless years 
drew nigh. He has known little of the bitterness of sorrow. 
He has escaped such grief as will bow in agony over his 
grave. He has not had to endure the sundering one by one 
of the bonds of sympathy and affection. He has been 
spared the sad consciousness of waning powers and dimin- 
ished usefulness, — the experience of protracted suffering and 
chronic infirmity. The volume of his life has been fairly 
written through, with no melancholy appendix of decline and 
decay. In his career of unintermitted mental and moral ac- 
tivity there has been no pause, but only, as we trust, a con- 
tinuance, a livinfir on under brighter auspices, where infinite 



IG -^ 

truth and love, combined, exalt every power and fill every 
affection, and have already merged for him the night of death t 
in the perfect day of heaven. 

May the peace of God sink into the hearts of the stricken 
household. May the Lord Jesus speak to their souls of re- 
union above, and the mansions in the Father's house on 
high. And may we all, whom the Providence of God has 
called to mourning, mourn the dead by living as, could he 
speak to us from the world of spirits, he would bid us live. 
Let the shadow of death and the dawn of an eternal day blend 
their influences on our spirits, that we may live as the dying 
ought with reference to things that are seen and temporal, and 
may seek, as the undying should, with mind and heart, with 
soul and strength, the things ihat arc unseen and eternal. 



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